.TH WRANN 1 "9 April 2009" "WFDB 10.4.20" "WFDB Applications Guide"
.SH NAME
wrann \- write a WFDB annotation file
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBwrann -r\fR \fIrecord\fR \fB-a\fR \fIannotator\fR
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBwrann\fR translates its standard input into an annotation file.
The format of \fBwrann\fR input should be that produced by \fBrdann\fR(1)
using its default settings.  Specifically, the pipeline
.br
	\fBrdann -r\fR \fIrecord\fR \fB-a\fR \fIiann\fR \fB-f 0 | wrann -r\fR \fIrecord\fR \fB-a\fR \fIoann\fR
.br
is guaranteed to produce an identical copy of the annotation file
read by \fBrdann\fR, provided that the \fBaux\fR fields of the annotations
do not contain embedded nulls.
.PP
The usual application for \fBwrann\fR is as an aid to annotation file
editing:  an annotation file may be translated into ASCII format
using \fBrdann\fR, edited using a text editor, and then translated back
into annotation file format using \fBwrann\fR.
.PP
Note the alternate format selected by \fBrdann\fR's \fB-x\fR option is
incompatible with \fBwrann\fR.
.PP
Versions of \fBwrann\fR included in version 10.4.20 (and later versions)
of the WFDB Software Package set the time fields of output annotations
to match the times in the first column of input if those times appear to
be absolute times (beginning with '[').  Otherwise, as in previous versions,
\fBwrann\fR matches the sample numbers given in the second column of input.
This capability can be used in a pipeline with \fBrdann\fR to copy a set of
annotations between two records that overlap in time, even if their starting
times or sampling frequencies are different.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.PP
It may be necessary to set and export the shell variable \fBWFDB\fR (see
\fBsetwfdb\fR(1)).
.SH SEE ALSO
\fBrdann\fR(1), \fBsetwfdb\fR(1)
.SH AUTHOR
George B. Moody (george@mit.edu)
.SH SOURCE
http://www.physionet.org/physiotools/wfdb/app/wrann.c
